Thirteen countries and eight currencies, in two weeks, had been the idea. One careless moment and a lost passport later, and the plan was to be spoilt. But as the expression goes; the adventure only begins when the plan fails....
At moments of complete catastrophe it is wonderful to be travelling with friends (thank you, Maxxx), for it is they who keep you sane and sensible; they who keep you focussed on the important stuff. "Ready to go by 0600 then", says Maxxx. "You can phone the consulate at the breakfast stop". So the new adventure began.
Route part one - Northerly line outbound, southerly line the return
Route part two - Big clockwise loop...
The outbound journey had been fun and went largely as planned. Travelling on different Eurotunnel shuttle services on the Friday, we met as planned at the overnight stop on the edge of Arras. Day One started dry but quickly became very wet as we moved south east, across the flat lands of Picardy towards the northern end of the Vosges mountains and on to Lahr in Germany. Very easy riding, but out of some 330 miles, more than half the distance was ridden in heavy rain. As we approached the Rhine the weather eased and, as expected, we found accommodation with ease.
Maxxx’s first European border crossing on a motorbike.
Lahr - Pleasant parking under cover for the bikes too.
Neither of us planned for the amount of rain we rode through on the first two days. Arriving in Vipiteno, late on the Sunday, we were wet and very cold. Leaving Lahr we crossed the Black Forest (remind me to go back there…), passed to the north of Lake Konstanz and entered Austria on the back roads, heading for the Timmelsjoch pass in to Italy. This was meant to be one of the high points… Highest altitude, perhaps, at over 2500 metres, but at only 1.5C according to Maxxx’s on-board thermometer, definitely the lowest in terms of temperature. And this was the end of June! Where was the sun?
...just to prove we were stupid enough to do it in that weather...
The answer to that was somewhere well above the heavy cloud that was sitting on top of the Alps and making us wet. Very wet. It also reduced visibility above 1200 metres-ish altitude to about twenty feet. If every cloud has a silver lining, we didn't find it. We did look, but when wet, cold, with over a kilometre of height to lose before any improvement in visibility would materialise, the overriding concern was to get off the mountain, out of the rain and somewhere warm. Vipiteno beckoned.
Vipiteno's clock tower - The a sunny morning after a very wet night...
Oh! How a bit of blue sky warms the soul. Enough cloud to moderate the heat, but not enough to stop the sun coming through and, crucially, not enough to rain. Perfect weather for the Dolomites. And so it proved. Maxxx will have to say for himself how much he enjoyed his first motorcycle experience in the Dolomites. That he came back through the same mountains on his return journey should give some indication.
However, we were on a route and a schedule, so had to simply pass through some of the most glorious countryside in Europe. Or rather we would have done had not local legislature not banned motorcycles from certain roads. When planning a route I start off looking at the shortest distance option, not the fastest. The shortest route did indeed take me through some beautiful scenery and along some insanely small roads. The locals clearly felt it had taken a few too many other things along them before, so we began to become familiar with that red circle with a white background; often banning everything and sometimes just motorcycles. The SS244 was one of these. Keep a proper map book handy…
The detour was no real hardship and, as the traffic thinned, we started to have fun on the SS51 as it headed towards Cortina. Though back on the route, we had to press on to remain on schedule. There are better routes through the Dolomites when you have the time to stay there, but if passing through and giving someone a taste, the SS52 and Passo della Mauria (1298m) does the job.
Maxxx making an adjustment to his video kit...
Lago Di Santa Caterina
The route would take us out of Italy and through Austria to get to Slovenia just past the Austrian town of Bleiburg. This might seem an odd route, but we had to do the miles and experience tells me that those miles are easier on Austrian roads as opposed to Slovenian ones through the Julian Alps… If you’ve never been, they are fantastic and worth a visit; just don’t expect to get through them quickly.
Maxxx was becoming familiar with European border crossings by this point - Austria to Slovenia
Ptuj was our target that evening; A pleasant town, good accommodation and food worthy of a photograph. If Wikipedia is to be believed, it is Slovenia’s oldest city. Not sure about that, but apparently the place dates back to the first century AD and the hotelier really wanted us to visit the thermal springs. I might well do so at some point, but it wasn’t going to happen on this trip.
Ptuj's clock tower - I like them, especially with a blue sky in the background...
Ptuj - Accommodation in the east is easy to come by, usually of a good standard and often great value. We had a whole apartment, two bedrooms, full kitchen etc. here, plus garage parking in the barn next door - bargain.
The town of Ptuj is also very close to the Croatian border and Day 4 took us in to and out of Croatia, across the plains of southern Hungary to the city of Szeged. A fairly flat route and reasonably short day meant meant we could take the occassional break and enjoy the scenery, as well as the occasional bit of loose surface for Maxxx to enjoy - he was spending a lot of time on tarmac...
All the tarmac riding meant Maxxx had been missing the dirt…
Our usual approach to finding accommodation, which involved finding the middle of the destination town/city, riding around for a few minutes, then taking pot luck, generally worked very well. Fortunately, Szeged was no exception and by chance the method found us a very inexpensive hotel (Mozart www.mozarthotel.hu). On a tour, the last thing you want is for something to happen to your motorcycle overnight, so it is especially pleasing when your accommodation offers a secure parking option, for example a garage (Lahr), or a barn (Ptuj), or in the case of the Mozart Hotel, their tiny terraced garden at the the back of the plot…
Not sure what the other guests thought...
Szeged is a very pleasant place with plenty to interest the visitor including the quirky architecture. It is home to one of Hungary’s principal universities and consequently has plenty of bars and other cultural attractions, including an annual outdoor theatre event in the main cathedral square; unfortunately, we didn’t have tickets. So instead we had to head to the openair beer hall, set up to make the most of the 2014 Football World Cup that was taking place at the time. Enough beer and pizza to fill up two hungry travellers and change from a fiver. It was difficult to go wrong…
Advice to travellers: make the most of events the locals put on while you are there...
The distance to our destination in Romania was only some 230 miles. Being well outside the Schengen zone it would mean another passport-requiring border. This one also looked as though we’d be required to buy a motorway vignette for the motorbikes, so it was a surprise to be told by the helpful lady in the kiosk that “motos free…”. Motorways didn’t figure in our plans anyway; well, at least not at this point, but more of that later. First we had to get to Sibiu.
Romania: Bike friendly road tolls
The DN7 is a very average Romanian road, which means it has plenty of trucks and homicidal white vans. These are all trying to make progress along the single carriageway road, rutted by the heavy lorries, clogged by all the traffic. It makes finding the best line for the two wheels of the bike a bit of a challenge. It also means it has plenty of small roadside stops at which to replenish the hungry traveller for a very small amount of money. Sibiu, which was to be our base for a couple of days while we enjoyed the Transfăgărășan Highway, was not far, so we were able to relax and enjoy those roadside stalls.
An evening out in Sibiu, a good night’s sleep and we’d on the Transfăgărășan Highway the next day…
At moments of complete catastrophe it is wonderful to be travelling with friends (thank you, Maxxx), for it is they who keep you sane and sensible; they who keep you focussed on the important stuff. "Ready to go by 0600 then", says Maxxx. "You can phone the consulate at the breakfast stop". So the new adventure began.
Route part one - Northerly line outbound, southerly line the return
Route part two - Big clockwise loop...
The outbound journey had been fun and went largely as planned. Travelling on different Eurotunnel shuttle services on the Friday, we met as planned at the overnight stop on the edge of Arras. Day One started dry but quickly became very wet as we moved south east, across the flat lands of Picardy towards the northern end of the Vosges mountains and on to Lahr in Germany. Very easy riding, but out of some 330 miles, more than half the distance was ridden in heavy rain. As we approached the Rhine the weather eased and, as expected, we found accommodation with ease.
Maxxx’s first European border crossing on a motorbike.
Lahr - Pleasant parking under cover for the bikes too.
Neither of us planned for the amount of rain we rode through on the first two days. Arriving in Vipiteno, late on the Sunday, we were wet and very cold. Leaving Lahr we crossed the Black Forest (remind me to go back there…), passed to the north of Lake Konstanz and entered Austria on the back roads, heading for the Timmelsjoch pass in to Italy. This was meant to be one of the high points… Highest altitude, perhaps, at over 2500 metres, but at only 1.5C according to Maxxx’s on-board thermometer, definitely the lowest in terms of temperature. And this was the end of June! Where was the sun?
...just to prove we were stupid enough to do it in that weather...
The answer to that was somewhere well above the heavy cloud that was sitting on top of the Alps and making us wet. Very wet. It also reduced visibility above 1200 metres-ish altitude to about twenty feet. If every cloud has a silver lining, we didn't find it. We did look, but when wet, cold, with over a kilometre of height to lose before any improvement in visibility would materialise, the overriding concern was to get off the mountain, out of the rain and somewhere warm. Vipiteno beckoned.
Vipiteno's clock tower - The a sunny morning after a very wet night...
Oh! How a bit of blue sky warms the soul. Enough cloud to moderate the heat, but not enough to stop the sun coming through and, crucially, not enough to rain. Perfect weather for the Dolomites. And so it proved. Maxxx will have to say for himself how much he enjoyed his first motorcycle experience in the Dolomites. That he came back through the same mountains on his return journey should give some indication.
However, we were on a route and a schedule, so had to simply pass through some of the most glorious countryside in Europe. Or rather we would have done had not local legislature not banned motorcycles from certain roads. When planning a route I start off looking at the shortest distance option, not the fastest. The shortest route did indeed take me through some beautiful scenery and along some insanely small roads. The locals clearly felt it had taken a few too many other things along them before, so we began to become familiar with that red circle with a white background; often banning everything and sometimes just motorcycles. The SS244 was one of these. Keep a proper map book handy…
The detour was no real hardship and, as the traffic thinned, we started to have fun on the SS51 as it headed towards Cortina. Though back on the route, we had to press on to remain on schedule. There are better routes through the Dolomites when you have the time to stay there, but if passing through and giving someone a taste, the SS52 and Passo della Mauria (1298m) does the job.
Maxxx making an adjustment to his video kit...
Lago Di Santa Caterina
The route would take us out of Italy and through Austria to get to Slovenia just past the Austrian town of Bleiburg. This might seem an odd route, but we had to do the miles and experience tells me that those miles are easier on Austrian roads as opposed to Slovenian ones through the Julian Alps… If you’ve never been, they are fantastic and worth a visit; just don’t expect to get through them quickly.
Maxxx was becoming familiar with European border crossings by this point - Austria to Slovenia
Ptuj was our target that evening; A pleasant town, good accommodation and food worthy of a photograph. If Wikipedia is to be believed, it is Slovenia’s oldest city. Not sure about that, but apparently the place dates back to the first century AD and the hotelier really wanted us to visit the thermal springs. I might well do so at some point, but it wasn’t going to happen on this trip.
Ptuj's clock tower - I like them, especially with a blue sky in the background...
Ptuj - Accommodation in the east is easy to come by, usually of a good standard and often great value. We had a whole apartment, two bedrooms, full kitchen etc. here, plus garage parking in the barn next door - bargain.
The town of Ptuj is also very close to the Croatian border and Day 4 took us in to and out of Croatia, across the plains of southern Hungary to the city of Szeged. A fairly flat route and reasonably short day meant meant we could take the occassional break and enjoy the scenery, as well as the occasional bit of loose surface for Maxxx to enjoy - he was spending a lot of time on tarmac...
All the tarmac riding meant Maxxx had been missing the dirt…
Our usual approach to finding accommodation, which involved finding the middle of the destination town/city, riding around for a few minutes, then taking pot luck, generally worked very well. Fortunately, Szeged was no exception and by chance the method found us a very inexpensive hotel (Mozart www.mozarthotel.hu). On a tour, the last thing you want is for something to happen to your motorcycle overnight, so it is especially pleasing when your accommodation offers a secure parking option, for example a garage (Lahr), or a barn (Ptuj), or in the case of the Mozart Hotel, their tiny terraced garden at the the back of the plot…
Not sure what the other guests thought...
Szeged is a very pleasant place with plenty to interest the visitor including the quirky architecture. It is home to one of Hungary’s principal universities and consequently has plenty of bars and other cultural attractions, including an annual outdoor theatre event in the main cathedral square; unfortunately, we didn’t have tickets. So instead we had to head to the openair beer hall, set up to make the most of the 2014 Football World Cup that was taking place at the time. Enough beer and pizza to fill up two hungry travellers and change from a fiver. It was difficult to go wrong…
Advice to travellers: make the most of events the locals put on while you are there...
The distance to our destination in Romania was only some 230 miles. Being well outside the Schengen zone it would mean another passport-requiring border. This one also looked as though we’d be required to buy a motorway vignette for the motorbikes, so it was a surprise to be told by the helpful lady in the kiosk that “motos free…”. Motorways didn’t figure in our plans anyway; well, at least not at this point, but more of that later. First we had to get to Sibiu.
Romania: Bike friendly road tolls
The DN7 is a very average Romanian road, which means it has plenty of trucks and homicidal white vans. These are all trying to make progress along the single carriageway road, rutted by the heavy lorries, clogged by all the traffic. It makes finding the best line for the two wheels of the bike a bit of a challenge. It also means it has plenty of small roadside stops at which to replenish the hungry traveller for a very small amount of money. Sibiu, which was to be our base for a couple of days while we enjoyed the Transfăgărășan Highway, was not far, so we were able to relax and enjoy those roadside stalls.
An evening out in Sibiu, a good night’s sleep and we’d on the Transfăgărășan Highway the next day…
the picture of Maxxx adjusting his video equipment looks like he's doing a Rossi foot peg ritual before doing the Transfăgărășan 
